I entered her slowly.
So slowly. Watching her face, feeling her body adjust to me, giving her time to tell me if this wasn't what she wanted. But her eyes stayed open. Fixed on mine. Her breath caught and released, caught and released, the particular rhythm of someone accepting pleasure.
I pressed my forehead to hers.
Breathed the same air.
"I've got you, little bird."
I began to move.
This wasn't our other times. No edges, no denial, no commands that made her beg and tremble. This was something simpler. Something more devastating in its simplicity.
Just two people holding onto each other.
I moved inside her with long, slow strokes. Felt her walls grip me, felt the tremor in her thighs where they wrapped around my hips. Her hands found my back. Nails pressing—not clawing, not desperate, just holding. Holding on.
"I've got you," I murmured again. With every thrust. A rhythm of words matching the rhythm of our bodies. "I've got you. I've got you."
Her eyes were shining.
Not with tears—not quite. With something else. Something that looked like safety. Like trust. Like all the things she'd been afraid to want because wanting had hurt her too many times.
I wanted to give her everything.
Wanted to pour every ounce of devotion into this moment—into the slide of my body into hers, the press of my chest againsther breasts, the way our breath mingled in the small space between our mouths.
"Maks." My name on her lips. "Maks."
She came quietly.
No screaming, no thrashing, none of the desperate release I'd wrung from her before. Just a trembling—her whole body shuddering beneath me, her walls clenching around my cock, her face buried in my neck as the wave crested and broke.
The sound she made was small.
Vulnerable.
The most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.
I followed moments later. Couldn't help it—the feel of her coming undone, the trust in the way she clung to me, all of it pulled me over the edge. I spilled inside her with a groan that came from somewhere deep.
It sounded like devotion.
It was.
Afterward, we lay tangled together.
I didn't pull out. Couldn't bear the separation—even that small distance felt like too much. She was soft against me, her breathing slowing, her body going heavy with the particular weight of someone surrendering to exhaustion.
I stroked her hair.
Counted the breaths. One. Two. Three. The rhythm steady, slowing further as sleep claimed her.
The room was quiet. The city hummed beyond the windows—that constant pulse of New York, indifferent to the private dramas playing out in its apartments. I pulled the blanket over us. Tucked it around her shoulders. Let my hand rest on the curve of her hip, thumb tracing absent patterns on her skin.
I memorized her.
The weight of her against my chest. The smell of her hair—lavender and paint and something uniquely her. The way her fingers curled even in sleep, still reaching for me.
